'FlashForward' returns tonight, but will you return with it?

Jack Davenport in "FlashForward."One of the weird developments of this TV season is the number of shows,
usually very young shows, that came on in the fall, then went on an
extended hiatus and are only returning now that spring's approaching.

"FlashForward"
is back tonight after being away for three and a half months, and both
"V" and "Glee" will have been gone for similar or longer gaps by the
time they return in upcoming weeks ("V" on March 30, "Glee" on April
13). And that's not even counting other shows like "Fringe" that have
taken shorter but still noticeable mid-season breaks.

Now, the
reasons behind these gaps - and what's happened during them - aren't
all the same. "Glee" went away in part because Ryan Murphy had a prior
commitment to direct a movie. Both "FlashForward" and "V" have been
retooled and had new showrunners installed since we last saw them.
"Fringe" went away because Fox needed, for some reason, to find a
timeslot for "Past Life."

But whatever the reason, all these
scenarios also seem to be the broadcast networks responding to the
problem that few people watch reruns anymore, and even fewer watch them
for serialized dramas. In the good ol' days when the networks had to
stretch 22 episodes of a show over the 39 weeks of the official TV
season, they could feel confident that the reruns would perform
adequately enough to live with, and that's just not the case anymore.
Ideally, every show would work the way "Lost" and "24" have for years,
and just air all their episodes straight through. The problem is that
the way the business is set up (and, like Titanic approaching an
iceberg, it's too big and unwieldy to easily maneuver around this
problem), most shows are incapable of starting production on a season
before late summer, and therefore the only shows that can run straight
through for 22 weeks are the ones that start in mid-season.

But
given how high-profile (if not always highly-rated) these shows are,
and how long most of the gaps have been, I'm going to be really curious
to see how many viewers remember or care to come back now. "Glee"
shouldn't have a problem, as its fans are rabid and loved what the show
was doing when it left, and as it'll be airing after "American Idol."
But "FlashForward" and "V" were both bleeding viewers when they went
away, in part because those viewers liked the ideas behind the shows
better than what the shows were doing with those ideas. I'll probably
give "V" another shot, because I've liked new showrunner Scott
Rosenbaum's work on "Chuck" and "The Shield," but with "FlashForward,"
there doesn't seem to be any there there, and the constant showrunner
changes suggest that nobody behind-the-scenes knows what to do with it,
either.

But out of curiosity, what are those of you who stuck
with "FlashForward" through November going to do tonight? Do you still
care? Are you viewing the two-hour episode tonight as a welcome event,
or the show's last chance to convince you to stay?